Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Well, not only was John Derbyshire wrong about how captured soldiers ought to behave and about what is good about British civilization -- he was also wrong about the spirit of the British sailors captured by Iran after it committed a still-unavenged act of war.

GUTSY Faye Turney turned the tables on Iranian tyrant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as he freed her in front of TV cameras -- making him SQUIRM.

She was the first of the 15 hostages ushered forward during the cynical stunt in the madman's own Tehran palace garden.

As Faye stood in front of bearded Ahmadinejad he asked her through a translator: "How is your daughter?"

Faye fumed in response: "I don't know, Mr President, I haven't seen her for 13 days -- remember?"

I recall, when hearing that this piece of horse-Mohammed upbraided Britain for deploying a mother, just wishing that someone would have the cajones to say something to the effect of, "Well, if it weren't for people like you, Britain wouldn't need to do so." This is, in effect, what Turney did. See the link for video footage.

Apparently, Faye Turney was the better man during that exchange. Sadly, the very fact that Tehran has not been flattened yet, and that Ahmadinejad remains alive at all and worse, in power, is testimony to the fact that our own leaders are sissies even in comparison to him.

Derbyshire would have done better to aim higher up in the British hierarchy when choosing to complain about spinelessness among the British.

She was a prisoner, Mr. Green. Nothing she did besides that one comment reflected what she would have otherwise done if not under duress.

As for the notion that the captives could rip their clothes off on camera, how did they know they were going to be released? Because someone with a British accent told them while they were in prison that they were?

For all she knew, even sayingwhat she did could have gotten her killed or imprisoned indefinitely. After all, from her vantage point, maybe the "release" was to be filmed first, before any negotiations had actually been done. How would she know one way or the other, being under the complete control of her captors?

I applaud her spirit, but regard her action as rash. Why? Because until she was completely out of Iran, her life was in peril. (And indeed, one could argue that doing what she did put her fellow prisoners in danger.)

I regard even this act of defiance on her part as entirely up to her, as entirely optional.

I am not a big fan of this Indian saying, but you should try it on here: "Before you criticize another man, walk a mile in his moccasins."

To sit back in comfort -- and without a gun pointed to your head -- and pass moral judgement on someone in a situation in which morality largely does not apply as you do -- that is what I find disappointing.